New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co. v. Bezue, 284 U.S. 415 (1932)

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New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co. v. Bezue

No. 263

Argued January 7, 1932
Decided January 25, 1932
284 U.S. 415

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK

Syllabus

1. A case is not within the Federal Employers’ Liability Act unless the employee at the time of his injury was engaged in interstate transportation or in work so closely related thereto as to be practically a part of it. Shanks v. Delaware, L. & W. R. Co., 239 U.S. 556; Chicago & E. I. R. Co. v. Industrial Comm’n, ante p. 296. P. 420.

2. Whether repair work on a locomotive comes within this definition must be determined not by reference to the kind of plant in which it was done, nor by the kind of labor usually performed by the employee, but by whether the locomotive at the time of the accident was in service in interstate transportation, or had been taken out of it. P. 420.

3. The fact that the facilities of the yard where the employee was at work at the time of the injury were used largely for servicing and repairing locomotives engaged in interstate commerce, and that he was engaged in a "plant service," is not sufficient to bring him within the Act. Pp. 419-420.

4. A practice of the railroad company to end its locomotives to another shop for so-called out-of-service repairs and to use the shop in which the injury occurred for monthly boiler washings and incidental repair cannot overcome facts showing that the locomotive in question was out of service at the time of the injury. Pp. 420-421.

5. The employee, when injured, was engaged in a terminal plant, moving a pair of main driving wheels from a shop where they had been repaired to a roundhouse where they were to be replaced under a locomotive. The locomotive was one used for interstate transportation, which for nine days had been undergoing repairs in connection with a boiler wash and was inert and partly dismantled. Held not within the Act.

256 N.Y. 427, reversed.

Certiorari, post, p. 604, to review a judgment of the Supreme Court of New York, entered on remittitur from the Court of Appeals, which affirmed a judgment of the Appellate Division, in an action in damages for personal injuries under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act.